Part 8 (1/2)

Karl said, also in English: ”Kovrin is here.” He jerked a thumb at the tall Russian standing in the rain behind him.

”Now?” The old man smiled in unsuppressed delight. ”Here? Kovrin!”

Kovrin suddenly sprang up the steps, pus.h.i.+ng Karl aside. After a perfunctory embrace, he and the old man went inside, speaking rapidly to each other in Russian. Karl followed them. He was hoping to earn another half guinea. He heard little of what they said, just a few words - ”St. Petersburg” - ”prison” - ”commune” - ”death” - and one very potent word he had heard many times before - ”Siberia”. Had Kovrin escaped from Siberia? There were quite a few Russians who had. Karl had heard some of them talking.

In the house, he could see that it was evidently no longer a doctor's surgery. The house, in fact, seemed virtually derelict, with hardly any furniture but piles of paper all over the place. Many bundles of the same newspaper stood in one corner of the hall. Over these a mattress had been thrown and was serving someone as a bed. Most of the newspapers were in Russian, others were in English and in what Karl guessed was German. There were also handbills which echoed the headlines of the newspapers: PEASANTS REVOLT, said one. CRUEL SUPPRESSION OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS IN ST. PETERSBURG, said another. Karl decided that these people must be political. His father had always told him to steer clear of ”politicals”, they were always in trouble with the police. Perhaps he should leave?

But then the old man turned to him and smiled kindly. ”You look hungry. Will you eat with us? ”

It would be foolish to turn down a free meal. Karl nodded. They entered a big room warmed by a central stove. From the way in which the room was laid out, Karl guessed that this had been the doctor's waiting room. But now it, too, stored bales of paper. He could smell soup. It made his mouth water. At the same time there came a peculiar sound from below his feet. Growling, thumping, clanking: it was as if some awful monster were chained in the cellar, trying to escape. The room shook. The old man led Karl and Kovrin into what had once been the main surgery. There were still gla.s.s instrument cases along the walls. Over in one corner they had installed a big, black cooking range and at this stood a woman, stirring an iron pot. The woman was quite pretty, but she looked scarcely less tired than Karl's mother. She ladled thick soup into an earthenware bowl. Karl's stomach rumbled. The woman smiled shyly at Kovrin whom she plainly did not know, but had been expecting. ”Who is the boy?” she asked.

”Karl,” said Karl. He bowed.

”Not Karl Marx, perhaps?” laughed the old man, nudging Karl on the shoulder. But Karl did not recognize the name. ”Karl Glogauer,” he said.

The old man explained to the woman: ”He's Kovrin's guide. Pesotsky sent him. Pesotsky couldn't come himself because he's being watched. To meet Kovrin, would have been to betray him to our friends ... Give the boy some soup, Tanya.” He took hold of Kovrin's arm. ”Now, Andrey Va.s.silitch, tell me everything that happened in Petersburg. Your poor brother, I have already heard about.”

The rumbling from below grew louder. It was like an earthquake. Karl ate the tasty soup, sitting hunched over his bowl at the far end of the long bench. The soup had meat in it and several kinds of vegetables. At the other end of the bench Kovrin and the old man talked quietly together, hardly aware of their own bowls. Because of the noise from the cellar, Karl caught little of what they said, but they seemed to be speaking much of killing and torture and exile. He wondered why n.o.body else seemed to notice the noise.

The woman called Tanya offered him more soup. He wanted to take more, but he was already feeling very strange. The rich food was hard to hold down. He felt that he might vomit at any moment. But he persisted in keeping it in his stomach. It would mean he would not need to eat tonight.

He summoned the courage to ask her what the noise was. ”Are we over an underground railway?”

She smiled. ”It is just the printing press.” She indicated a pile of leaflets on the bench. ”We tell the English people what it is like in our country - how we are ground under by the aristocrats and the middle-cla.s.ses.”

”They want to know?” Karl asked the question cynically, His own experience had given him the answer.

Again she smiled. ”Not many. The other papers are for our countrymen. They give news of what is going on in Russia and in Poland and elsewhere. Some of the papers go back to those countries...”

The old man looked up, putting a finger to his lips. He shook his head at Tanya and winked at Karl. ”What you don't hear won't harm you, young one.”

”My father was a printer in Poland,” Karl said. ”Perhaps you have work for him. He speaks both Russian, Polish and Yiddish. He is an educated man.

”There's little money in our work,” said Tanya. ”Is your father for the cause?”

”I don't think so,” said Karl. ”Is that necessary?”

”Yes,” said Kovrin suddenly. His red cheekbones burned a little more hotly. ”You must stop asking questions, boy. Wait a while longer. I think I will need to, see Pesotsky.”

Karl didn't tell Kovrin that he didn't know where to find Pesotsky, because he might get another sum of money for taking Kovrin back to Whitechapel. Perhaps that would do. Also, if he could introduce his father to one of these people, they might decide to give him a job anyway. Then the family would be respectable again. He looked down at Ms clothes and felt miserable. They had stopped steaming and were now almost dry.

An hour later the noise from below stopped. Karl hardly noticed, for he was almost asleep with his head on his arms on the table. Someone seemed to be reciting a list to what had been the rhythm of the printing press.

”Elizelina Kralchenskaya - prison. Vera Ivanovna - Siberia. Dmitry Konstantinovitch - dead. Yegor Semyonitch - dead. Dukmasovs - all three dead. The Lebezyatnikovna sisters - five years prison. Klinevich, dead. Kudeyarov, dead. Nikolayevich, dead. Pervoyedov, dead. Petrovich, dead. And I heard they found Tarasevich in London and killed him.”

”That's so. A bomb. Every bomb they use on us confirms the police in their view. We're always blowing ourselves up with our bombs, aren't we?” The old man laughed. ”They've been after this place for months. One day a bomb will go off and the newspapers will report the accident -another bunch of Nihilists destroy themselves. It is easier to think that. What about Cherpanski? I heard he was in Germany...”

”They rooted him out. He fled. I thought he was in England. His wife and children are said to be here.”

”That's so.”

Karl fell asleep. He dreamed of respectability. He and his father and mother were living in the Houses of Parliament. But for some reason they were still sewing coats for Mr. Armfelt.

Kovrin was shaking him. ”Wake up, boy. You've got to take me to Pesotsky now.”

”How much? ” Karl said blearily.

Kovrin smiled bitterly. ”You're learning a good lesson, aren't you?” He put another half-guinea on the table. Karl picked it up. ”You people...” Kovrin began, but then he shrugged and turned to the old man. ”Can we get a cab?”

”Not much chance. You'd best walk, anyway, ft will be a degree safer.”

Karl pulled his blanket round him and stood up. He was reluctant to leave the warmth of the room but at the same time he was anxious to show his parents the wealth he had earned for them. His legs were stiff as he walked from the room and went to stand by the front door while Kovrin exchanged a few last words with the old man.

Kovrin opened the door. The rain had stopped and the night was very still. It must be very late, thought Karl.

The door closed behind them. Karl s.h.i.+vered. He was not sure, where they were, but he had a general idea of the direction of the river. Once there he could find a bridge and he would know where he was. He hoped Kovrin would not be too angry when he discovered that Karl could not lead him directly to Pesotsky. They began to walk through the cold, deserted streets, some of which were dimly lit by gas-lamps. A few cats screeched, a few dogs barked and a few voices raised in anger came from the mean houses by which they pa.s.sed. Once or twice a cab clattered into sight and they tried to hail it, but it was engaged or refused to stop for them.

Karl was surprised at how easily he found London Bridge. Once across the sullen blackness of the Thames he got his bearings and began to walk more confidently, Kovrin walking silently beside him.

In another half-an-hour they had reached Aldgate, brightened by the flaring lamps of the coffee-stall which stood open all night, catering to the drunkards reluctant to go home, to the homeless, to the s.h.i.+ft workers and even to some gentlemen who had finished sampling the low-life of Stepney and Whitechapel and were waiting until they could find a cab. There were a few women there, too - haggard, sickly. In the glare of the stall, their garishly painted faces reminded Karl of the icons he had seen in the rooms of the Russians who lived on the same floor as his family. Even their soiled silks and their faded velvets had some of the quality of the clothes the people wore in the icons. Two of the women jeered at Karl and Kovrin as they pa.s.sed through the pool of light and entered the gash of blackness which was the opening to the warren of alleys where Karl lived.